Category Archives: Myths

Sacred narratives

Livermore’s Rockboy

Main Piece: There’s a place near where I live called Livermore. There’s an old highway which is closed now. Apparently there was a boy who sat on the overpass of the tunnel of the highway. He sat there and threw rocks at cars but one day some guy got mad at the kid and murdered him. Now his ghost haunts that overpass called Rockboy. It takes a lot to go to that place. You have to go through many alleys and stuff to get through and to hear Rockboy. What you have to do to see him you have to first go and turn off all electronic devices like your phone, car and anything like that, normally people go with a group cause it’s pretty scary. So once everything is off, everyone who is there has to be connected in some way and then someone has to say something along the lines of “Rockboy we come in peace.” when my friends and I did that I swear that I heard rocks being thrown.

Context: The informant moved to San Ramon in 2007 and heard about the myth from upperclassmen at his highschool. When learning about this ritual, he and a group of friends decided to try it.

Thoughts: This legend seems to be one that reflects the fear and eeriness of the overpass that’s abandoned. With abandoned sites like this, there seems to be a story behind it for why it was abandoned in the first place so that people can have a sense of thrill and excitement in a completely normal place, whether it is real or not.

Salish Tribe – Thunderbird and Spirit of the Water

Nationality: American (Norwegian heritage)
Age: 55
Occupation: Software Developer
Residence: Woodinville, Washington, USA
Performance Date: 4/29/20
Primary Language: English

Informant: We also have to talk about the myths of the Salish people, particularly the Thunderbird and the Spirit of the Water. I don’t know them that well, I just know that the Thunderbird is the bird that makes the thunder in the sky with the clap of his wings, and the Spirit of the Water is the Orca. He’s like… a brother. Someone who protects you and watches over you. 

Me: Where did you first hear about them? 

Informant: I grew up with them. The Swinimish tribe was just down the road in La Conner. We’d play them in sports all the time, the kids in the tribal school, so we were always over there. I think they were called The Braves. They hosted a basketball tournament every year, and it was a big deal, to go to the Swinimish Basketball Tournament. But you would always be – you’d always learn about their history. That was just the way it was. And it was really considered a good thing. You’d go to their school, and they’d have a giant Orca in their gymnasium. It was everywhere! That was just kinda what it was. And the totem poles, and you’d learn the history of the totem poles, how to read them and what they were and what they represented and things like that. 

Background: 
My informant is my father. He is in his mid-fifties, and grew up in a rural farm town in Washington State near some Native American tribes. As he described in the piece, he played sports with kids from their tribal school, so he was exposed first hand to Native American history as opposed to learning about it in school. The myths of the Salish people are pretty well known in the general Seattle area, and many have been turned into children’s books you might find in school libraries or bookstores. (While that’s not how my father learned the stories, I think it’s important to bring it up for context of the area he grew up in)

Thoughts: 

While the stories of the Thunderbird and other characters in these myths are widely known across Washington, I personally didn’t know that the Orca was the Spirit of the Water. It made a lot of sense, and made me rethink if that’s why Washington is so protective of their Orcas. I always thought it was because they aren’t very common, and that made having them nearby a source of pride; however, now I’m wondering how much of Washington’s attachment to the animal has to do with the myths that say the Orcas will watch over us and protect us. It’s a perspective I’d never thought about before, and I found it to be really interesting.

Ram and the berries

Nationality: Indian
Age: 56
Occupation: Corporate Manager
Residence: Pune, India
Performance Date: April 2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

Piece

    On one day of Ram’s exile, he was approached by a woman who was a big devotee of him. She has a beautiful- you know- pure love for him because he had this persona of a warm, loving, kind, wonderful person. 

    So… what she did is… she told Ram that she wanted to host him and give him some fruits that she collected. Seeing the warmth in her eyes, Ram said that he would love to eat in her house. At the house, she had three plates of berries, one for Ram, one for Sita, and one for Laxman. They sat down and started eating. Ram was very happy because all the berries were sweet. The berries were the berr berries you know? This- those berries are either sweet- or sour, red or white but you can’t tell from outside. So he was eating the berries and all of them were sweet. 

But in the middle, he noticed there was a small bite taken from each of the berries. He asked the woman what these bites were so- and she said that she had taken a bite from each berry to make sure that it was sweet for him. Ram laughed and happily ate all the berries. 

Background

    This story is a small sub story from the ancient epic, The Ramayana, which is one of the ancient holy stories about Ram, the 7th avatar of Vishnu. There is a complex backstory for Ram involving being exiled from his own kingdom with his wife and his brother. The story is a classic hero’s journey tale in Hindu mythology and many sub stories have emerged in the folklore of the Indian people. 

Context
    My mother told me this story over the phone after I asked her about stories she would tell my brother and I as children. 

Thoughts

This was a story that my mother would often tell me when I would be grossed out by eating the same food that my brother or my father had eaten. I honestly don’t know if this story is included in the ancient story or if it is a story that my mother’s ancestors might have made up to get naughty children to eat food that has already been touched.

This story teaches us not only to respect everyone and appreciate their gestures, but also to be free and generous with our love and devotion to a good person.

Oka Falalla

Nationality: Native American
Age: 53
Occupation: CEO of Atsiniki Cigars
Residence: Franklin, Tennessee
Performance Date: 04-25-2020
Primary Language: English
Language: Choctaw

Main Piece: 

Informant: The Choctaw of old tell the story of Oka Famalla, “the returning waters.” This story has been told among the Choctaw for as long as we know.

Interviewer: What is the “returning waters?”

Informant: Long ago, the Choctaw began to be influenced in a bad way by other people. And they began to lose traditional Choctaw values, like taking care of each other. The Creator, Hashtala, had warned the people that they needed to return to our ways, or something bad would happen to them. One man, though, was a good man. He tried to keep our traditional ways. So Hashtala told him to make a large raft out of limbs from the sassaphrass trees, a tree common to the Choctaw lands. He made this large raft, and then it began to rain. It rained for many days, no one really knows how long. Then it stopped. The man floated on the raft for many days after the rain stopped. Then he saw a small blue bird. This bird’s name translates into the English phrase of “turtle dove.” This small bird stayed with the man and as it would fly, the man paddled his raft in the direction the bird flew. Then they came upon land. The bird became a female and she and the man stayed together, had children, and began to populate the earth.

Interviewer: That story sounds a lot like the Bible story of Noah and the ark.

Informant: Yes. When the Choctaw heard the Bible story, they wondered how the writers of the Bible knew the story of Oka Famalla. But we also knew that many tribes had similar stories, so it was not a complete surprise when the white man had a story like theirs also.

Background:

The informant is a Choctaw man in his early 50’s. He was born in Texas and grew up in Oklahoma. He currently resides in Tennessee with his wife and children.

Context:

During the Covid-19 Pandemic I flew back home to Tennessee to stay with my family. The informant is my father. My dad and I decided to have cigars in the back yard and I asked if he could share a few stories regarding our Native culture. I’ve grown up learning about these many traditions but asked him to explain them as if sharing with someone unfamiliar with the culture.

Thoughts: 

From Deucalion and Pyrrha of Greek Mythology to the story of Noah and the Ark in Judeo-Christian culture, flood stories have been a central theme in cultures all around the world. The Great Flood has pre-biblical origins, the oldest known account featuring Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh of ancient Mesopotamia. After hearing the story of Oka Famalla, it was interesting to see the commonalties between these stories. They usually involve humanity becoming corrupt and a deity sending a flood to destroy the world as a result, a sort of a global baptism if you will. A morally righteous person is set apart and tasked to build a large boat to preserve his species. I thought it was interesting how the bird is featured in all of these stories, specifically the dove. This particular story stood out in that it has the bird transforming into a woman but other than that the similarities are quite note-worthy

Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival and Myth about the Moon

Nationality: Chinese America
Age: 23
Occupation: part time tutor
Residence: Hong Kong
Performance Date: April 23
Primary Language: English

This is a transcription of an interview with a friend from high school, identified as A. In this piece, I am identified as IC.

IC: Can you tell me about Mid-Autumn festival?

A: Okay, so Mid-Autumn festival is a festival that is closely tied to Chinese traditions of celebrating the harvest. It’s in the fall, typically in late September or October usually September. And so, a large part of the Mid-Autumn festival is the celebration of family gatherings as well because the roundness of the moon is supposed to be symbolic of everyone sitting around the table at family gatherings. There’s also another huge component, which is moon worship that comes from a Chinese myth.

IC: Okay, can you tell me about that myth?

A: Yeah, so there was this man called Hou Yi who was really good at archery. One day, there was a huge drought because there were ten different suns in the sky, and he shot down nine of the suns and left the only last one up so we could still have sunlight.

IC: Wait, I feel like I’ve heard this before.

A: Yeah, you probably heard it in like high school.

IC: Probably. Anyway, continue.

A: Right, so this immortal was impressed by Hou Yi, so he gave him an elixir for immortality, but he didn’t want to be immortal without his wife and it was only a one-person kind of deal. He decided to not take it and instead kept it and have his wife, Chang’e be the keeper of the elixir to guard it. But one day when he was out doing something official like, official business or whatever, Chang’e was approached by Hou Yi’s apprentice who demanded that she give him the elixir. Instead of handing it over she took the potion herself and became immortal. Then, she ascended to the moon and so now people worship Chang’e as a kind of goddess of the moon to commemorate her bravery and quick thinking.

My family doesn’t worship her, but I guess it depends on other people or what you believe in, like I’m sure many people still worship gods in China, especially in more rural communities.

IC: What does your family do in mid-Autumn festival to celebrate it?

A: So, we gather together as a family and a popular tradition in China is eating mooncakes. Mooncakes are like… I’m going to call them pastries or like cakes that are made with really dense white lotus paste and most of the traditional ones have an egg yolk in the middle. Recently, there have been a lot of creative kind of recreations over the years. For example, recently, there have been mochi ones and like sesame flavoured ones.

IC: I miss mooncakes, like the ones without yolk. The ones with yolk are gross. Is there anything else your family does?

A: Same, we’re the minority. Uh, not really. It’s just mostly a nighttime celebration but lanterns are a part of the celebration, I think. When I was younger, I would go outside with an electric paper lantern and play around and hang them up. The reason why lanterns are important is not very well known. It seems to be that lanterns have become a symbol of the festival.

Background:

My informant is 23 years old and she is my friend from high school, which was in Hong Kong. She went to New York for college and graduated last year. She is currently working in Hong Kong.

Context:

I asked her about this tradition because I vaguely remember learning about Chinese traditions for Mid-Autumn Festival during Chinese class in high school. I also remember eating mooncakes in Hong Kong, even though my family didn’t celebrate it the same way. I thought it would be interesting to ask someone who comes from a Chinese/Hong Kong background to ask about the specifics since I don’t know much about it. All I knew was from textbooks designed for speakers learning it as a second language.

Thoughts:

Hearing my friend talk about how her family celebrates it and the traditions that she knows about was interesting to hear as different countries celebrate it differently. It was informative to learn about the story of Hou Yi and Chang’e and although worshipping the moon goddess is something everyone does, it was still interesting to learn about the tradition and the importance of the moon.